I Called Him Elric
by Laurynn
Summary: It was obvious that only his principle loves could call him Ed and that none of them were around any longer to do so. Edward was too formal for my taste. And so when I did refer to him, I used his surname, Elric. (1/1 Complete)


"I called him Elric" by laurynn. For you sensitive readers, just know there's a little bit of drinking and a little bit of sexy automail time.

I was thinking about his name, half-dreaming in the motel bed. I was almost asleep, curled on top of the covers. It was too hot to be under them.

He never told me his name.

He did not want a name; an identity. He wanted no associations, no beginnings of any kind. He wished to be a shadow, fading in and out of this world in a rhythm.

I was nothing to him, a no one. And neither of us played a game of introductions any longer.

I didn't need his real name but I did need something. I had taken great care to compartmentalize my life into neat, ordered sections. I needed a placeholder, a _label_ , I could use to categorize him. I looked through his belongings the morning after our tryst. He was in the shower. I thought him too trusting to leave me alone with his things.

Everything he owned was custom-made. And I suppose with half a metal body, it would have to be. His boots were tailored; I could tell from the seams alone. All of his clothing was widened in the correct places to suit the excess of his automail.

Even his gloves were carefully made - different sizes, stitched in fine black leather.

I picked through his coat, a long heavy black thing that I would soon learn he was unreasonably attached to. I discovered a pocket watch lacking insignia and some thick folded documents, one with a wax seal. I turned the silver watch over in my hand as I rifled through the documents.

It was then I found his name.

When I saw him for the second time, months and months later, his eyes were hungry for me. It was a different bar, a different day but his eyes had been searching. I saw him first and then his caught mine. He waded slowly through the crowd, his eyes never leaving mine, as if he'd been caught in my orbit. I remember it acutely. When he reached me, I spoke the name I had read on the documents: Ed. His face flashed with pain, like he'd been stung. I never spoke that name again.

It was obvious that only his principle loves could call him Ed and that none of them were around any longer to do so. Edward was too formal for my taste. And so when I did refer to him, I used his surname, Elric.

I was almost lost to sleep thinking about his name when I heard the _chunk_ of the key insert into the lock. The door opened for a long moment, letting in the wild voices of the crowd in the motel courtyard. I watched from the dark as he dropped the key on the table and pulled his gloves off, one of them falling to the floor. He took that black coat off. I rolled my eyes. It was sweltering outside, even at night. He had no rational reason to wear it.

I saw him stretch in the beams of light that split through the blinds. The city's glare turned the sheen of his hair into a halo of amber. He came around the side of the bed and unlaced his boots. He kept his back turned to me, our backs together, as he pulled off one sock and then the rest of clothing. He slid into bed next to me. I shifted, turning my body towards him.

He wasted no time.

I had been nearly asleep but came back towards consciousness as he touched me. His flesh fingertips brushed up under my shirt. He leaned into me, his breath mixing with mine. He was anxious for me, hungry for me, and I closed my eyes to feel his body with all of my other senses. I responded to his need with my own, equal, vigor.

When we finished, he lie on top of me, both of us breathless. He lay on my chest, his ear between my breasts, sweaty form against sweaty form. We were sticky with sweat but I wanted his body as close to mine as it could be.

He used his fake fingers to tap the rhythm of my thrumming heartbeat onto my thigh and we slowed our panting together. When our paces returned to normal, he lifted his form from mine and rested beside me. His arm was up against my own in the unbearable heat and an oval of moisture formed where our skin touched.

Elric stared at the ceiling. I turned my head away from him, watching the hallway passersby blot out the strips of light with their moving forms.

On nights like this, we lay together in the silence, feeling the pulse of someone beside us and so it had been for the past two and a half years.

We'd met in a bar, a slummy station off the drag in Kelb. Well, if you can call it meeting. I'd been sitting in the bar alone for nearly three hours, having scared off anyone interested early into my drinking. I was playing with my glass, watching the traces of liquid slip across the bottom, empty again. I had finished the bottle behind the bar and hadn't really seen the need to ask for more since I could barely feel the liquor and the bartender was already dubious. That was when he came and sat next to me, that stupid black trenchcoat on his shoulders. At least then it had been winter and the coat had been warranted.

He was taller than I was, by a sizeable amount, thin framed but well built - sturdy. His tawny hair was lengthy, a fashion long out of style, braided down his back.

That was the first thing I really noticed: he wasn't a man of trend. I liked that.

He wore his tenchcoat and it covered his arms. He also wore tight-fitting white gloves that day, another detail that seemed ill placed.

He caught the bartender's eyes and tapped the bar with his gloved fingers. The bartend nodded in understanding but continued to service the customers at the far end.

It was a large bar, people mingling on either end of me, so why that seat next to a woman, sulking alone, playing with her glass – well, I had my suspicions already. Yet he didn't seem to be very interested in me.

The tend came over, folding up one of his sleeves, and raised his chin to hear. The bar was noisy and I found myself leaning in a fraction to hear as well.

"Two of whatever she's drinking," he said over the noise. The bartender nodded and walked off, presumably to get more liquor as I had finished off the previous bottle. I fixed my eyes on this stranger, ready to shut him down. But as I considered him, I thought about how many times men had tried to pick me up with some line, how many times I'd been bought drinks.

Those men wanted to play a different game than I did

They wanted my name. They wanted a chase. They tried playfully to guess my drink choice, buying me another glass of whatever I was drinking and what they liked for themselves. But this was the first time I'd ever had a man drink what I was drinking. He would regret that and I was going to enjoy it thoroughly.

I surveyed him again, trying to ascertain exactly what he was after. He didn't look like he wanted to pursue me; it truth, he'd barely made eye contact with me which gave him an arrogant air. And though he was a handsome man but I wasn't much into the cocky sort.

But then I caught a glimpse of something unexpected. This man had moved his gloved hand as he brushed a strand of long amber hair from his face. In the moment he did it, I saw a glimmer of reflective light. When he put his hand back on the bar, I saw it clearly for a second time. His hand, at least to his wrist, was automail. And if I wasn't mistaken it was settling steel, a rare C grade steel type that I had never seen actually fitted to a human.

I leaned into him so he could hear me over the noise and said the only thing I thought necessary.

"I hope you can hold your liquor."

He smirked, finally turning so I could see his whole face. "I can hold much more than that."

"An example, if you don't mind," I said, waving my hand for a demonstration as he situated his mouth near my ear.

"Well I've held your attention for a solid ten seconds now," he said.

"An excellent achievement," I said, as the bartender returned and poured our drinks - straight Galful. I picked it and up and toasted to him. "To you and your extraordinaire. Nine seconds was the record to beat."

We shot together. Like most men I'd gotten to drink Galful with me, this man did not spit or moan or choke. He drained it, in sync with me and then tapped the bar again before he'd even finished swallowing.

"Another," he said quietly. Apparently, he wanted the clearest thing in his vision to blur as fast as it could.

We were filled again and we repeated raising our glasses. "To myself again, I think."

I almost laughed but I stopped to watch as he threw it back, no problem. He thunked the glass down on the bar. "Another," he instructed the bartender. He looked at me again and realized I had not shot with him.

"You didn't drink to me," the stranger said, offended.

"I drank to you once. It wasn't very rewarding."

He laughed, slyly with only half his mouth. "Maybe you didn't drink enough." He said, motioning for me to drink again.

On our third shot, I grew wary of him. I'd had many men try to drink Galful with me and none of them had ever gotten past the third shot without gagging. I could hold my liquor better than any man could as my own liver was now mostly machinery. But now I couldn't help but wonder if his liver was too. His automail wrist indicated trauma – the accident that took his hand could have easily excavated his organs too. For all I knew, he was just as much machine as I was. He was an opponent I could not gauge.

This was a game I was interested in playing.

I drank my glass and put it down next to his. A drunken woman interrupted our bartender, slamming the bar a few seats down. The tend excused himself to attend to her.

The stranger looked over at me. "You are quite the alcoholic." He had no idea. I'd been well into my drinking hours before he'd arrived.

"And yourself," I said, raising the empty glass to him. He chinked his against mine with a laugh and pretended to drink again. Then a movement from down the bar caught both of our eyes as the crowd at the end began to get louder and began to cheer. We were silent for a while as we watched them gallivant, taking shots together, their friends cheering drunkenly beside them. His interest in me had been momentary and that annoyed me.

"Is this how you normally get your mark?" I asked sardonically, my leaning my head back. But he hadn't heard me, his attention still trained on the crowd. He turned at my voice and leaned in close. I repeated my query with my lips touching his ear. He needed a challenge and I needed to see how he would respond.

"I only ordered what you were drinking," he said defensively, his smirk gone.

"But you didn't think it was Galful." I challenged him again.

"Does it matter?"

"If you were looking to get me drunk there were plenty of easier targets." A woman

from the crowd let out a squeal. "My point," I said waving my hand in her direction.

"Moot point." He did not intend to argue with me.

He lifted his finger to the bartender, who came back and refilled our glasses.

I shot it, the liquor burning my throat. That felt like my cue. I stood, holding the bar until I got my footing correctly on my heels, threw my share of cenz on the bar top, and left him there. I walked out the side door into the frigid night.

That'd happened almost two and a half years ago. Now, we had a routine. We never shared our passions, our emotions. In fact, we rarely spoke, meeting in various places to find warmth in each other. On rare occasions, he would spout a slur of frustration, with his research, which I knew very little about. It was nothing personal. We were always circling each other, an arm's distance between our respective truths.

I expected him to have a weakness, something to break him, to push him past the limit of our barriers with each other. Make him forget that he'd taken a vow to never speak of his life and blurt something out, but Elric never did anything without intention. A lesser man would have let his guard down – would have been wooed by a beautiful woman and the darkness we so often shut ourselves into. But not Elric. When he did smile, like the night we'd met, he never did it with his whole face and I'd long since come to the conclusion he'd forgotten how.

And so we used each other shamelessly and perceptively for our own needs.

Elric had needs like any other man, for he was still a man, even if nearly half of him was only scars and screws. That was another topic that initially confused me about him – how sensitive he was about his automail, a fact I learned very quickly when he followed me out of the bar into the freezing air on that first night.

I'd taken three careful steps into the alley before I needed to lean against the building. It had snowed since I'd arrived and I had to navigate the ankle-high drifts in heels. I was using the little light over the bar's side door to guide my steps into the shallowest parts but my light was suddenly blocked as the door banged open.

I turned a fraction, to see if it was him. I still had my hand to the wall.

"I didn't realize you wanted my attention for the entire hour," I said sarcastically as he made his way down the steps to me.

"I was thinking the entire night."

"I have very high standards," I said, challenging him again.

He paused for a second, and then threw his head back in a horribly vain laugh before turning to leave.

"Well then," he said dramatically, bowing and flourishing his arm. "Let me leave in your grace." He began to walk off in the other direction, light slipping off his shoulders as he stepped into the shadow.

"Is that fourth-grade settling steel?" I asked gently, turning to him.

He stopped in the darkness. He looked over his shoulder, his face a silhouette.

"When did you notice?" He asked, pulling his gloves on a little more snug, almost as a precaution.

"First shot."

He smiled the same crooked half-smile. "Then you'll know I'm nothing like what you're looking for." His words tasted bitter.

"My standards," I said seriously, "are that you can perform and don't expect any nonsensical romantic shit, where we share our dreams for the future."

He turned fully as I spoke, his form still in the shadow. Then he walked to me with purpose, understanding my invitation, pulling off his left glove, and was on me in a second, pressing me up against the freezing brick wall, his tongue in my mouth and his warm fingers slipping under my dress and spreading my legs apart. I reached for his other arm to steady myself, but he pulled it back, ruining the moment. He stepped back, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

I reached for his arm again. He tried to withdraw but I held firm and when I grasped it, I understood his withdrawal as I felt the steel that comprised it.

He wanted to soften the blow. I knew about his hand but I hadn't known about his arm. He didn't know if I would reject him. He stood there, staring down at the snow, his hand still covering his mouth.

I reached for his hand and gripped it in mine. The automail was solid, unforgiving. He couldn't feel the strength of my grip. So instead, I pulled him back to me, his body warm against me. Then we fled, with more than warmth on our minds, to the nearest motel with a bed.

He turned the lights off, once we were in the door, so that we were racing to unclothe in the dark. But as soon as I was done, I flipped the lights back on. He was pulling down his boxers when I caught him with the light.

The damage to his body was much more extensive than I'd imagined. His entire right arm was automail, all the way up to his shoulder and I could see the plates shape to his back. He had covered it with a thick, custom nylon. His opposite leg was automail too, the metal extending to far above his knee, which was covered with a smooth fitted sock. I could see the reflections of the gears beneath it.

I'd seen more than my share of automail but Elric had the worst scars of any man I'd ever seen. It was immediately obvious he had sustained the loss in his early childhood. His body had blurred and warped in the years that had passed.

He straightened up, his entire body exposed for my viewing pleasure, and I felt a ripple of his anger beginning. I thought he might gather his things and leave, but I was naked in front of him too. He stood, looking me over in return – a body more mangled and grotesque than even his. Sure, I was part flesh too and retained all my limbs, but the insides of me were more hinges than bone, more machine than muscle. By the scars crissing and crossing my torso, he knew that I would not reject him. I knew the same.

He had asked me, long after that day, if it was unpleasant. He hadn't needed to explain – he needed to know if his automail really was a deterrent. His muscles were tight and bulging, as were other parts of him, plenty human where it mattered. I think he may have been worried about seeing me for any prolonged time if I didn't have a strong stomach. But with the amount of incisions my own body had undergone, it would have taken much more to deter me.

There were a hundred things to note about him as our bodies met the first time. He didn't like touching me with his automail, I think because he wanted to feel with the parts of him that still could. And he was nervous to lay on me, worried that he might shatter the delicate machines inside me keeping my alive. But the positives were his and they outweighed his hesitation. His muscles were scarred but they were sculpted. His lips were soft, his tongue masterful. For having the difficulties he had implied about finding a partner, I found it very hard to believe.

And so it came to be that Elric and I found a small solace in each other. I felt it deeply, a connection that had little to do with his soul and almost everything to do with his body – that we were both scarred and shattered people yet only in a physical state. I was not someone that men wanted to take home, that that met parents for brunch. It was different with Elric. I didn't have to explain anything to him and he didn't stare at my scars the way others had, in fear or disgust.

Instead, the first morning after, when I woke, he inspected my entire body as a curious child might have. He started with one scar and followed it with his finger until he reached the end, at which point he would pick another to follow. He was mapping line after line, making an atlas of my body: under my breast and around, across my shivering belly, three healed incisions on my pelvic bone. He moved to the six on my left rib cage and running his tips along the ridges of the bones, two underneath my clavicle, then three on my neck.

When he was satisfied, he asked no questions.

I sat up and scooted towards him to study his own deformed body. He was sitting up, in his shorts, his metal hand in a fist. I unwound the fist with my fingers and ran my fingertips along the nylon he had put there. My fingers climbed to his shoulders and peeled the nylon off. It was freezing outside and his steel parts were freezing too. I didn't pull my hands away. If it had been flesh, I could have changed its temperature. I could have made him warm or made him shiver. The automail was the opposite. The cold was uncompromising. It seeped into my fingers as I caressed his armored forearm, turning it this way and that. When I reached his elbow, I bent it awkwardly forward and back, inspecting the joint that made it function, running my fingers into each groove to feel the wires connected to his nerves. When I reached the seam where the automail fit into his arm's socket, and contoured around his shoulder, I touched each scar on his skin gently.

It was a fine piece of machinery.

I hadn't needed explanations. My initial questions had only been to get a rise out of him. My scars willed me into silence. They were my own burden to carry, my own weight to bear. In the same way, his history was his own and I had no desire to carry any more weight on my fake organs than I needed to.

That had been the first morning; snow on the ground, the snap of chill in the air. With the heat surrounding the current morning it didn't seem possible that it had ever been freezing. We were in the peak of summer now, far away from winter's grip.

I woke suddenly from the humidity and sat up, looking down on his sleeping form for a few minutes; his spilling amber hair. A bad day had driven him to me. Even his automail hand was clenched. I stared at it for a long time, wondering about the mechanics of automail, whether he'd fallen asleep with it closed tight or he'd done it sometime in the night and it wouldn't naturally unwind.

I slipped out of bed, my eyes glancing over his coat and the lone glove on the floor. I moved to turn the AC down but he was an expert on movement. I had my back to him for less than a minute when I heard him stir.

I turned to him. He was propped up on his good arm, shirtless with the covers half over him. His hair was in a mass around his shoulders. He pulled the covers off and rubbed his face. I turned back to the AC and set it lower.

I climbed back into bed but I didn't pull the covers over me.

We laid in silence. My back to him, I stared at the window as the sun and its heat seeped into the room one inch at a time. I was thinking of everything I had to do, all the chores I had left unfinished from the day before. I'd come early because I'd wanted to get away from them, to think of something else. But really, they hadn't disappeared in my effort to avoid them. Instead, they'd become urgent.

I was still staring when I felt his fingers pluck something from my side. I looked over to see him pulling a long auburn strand from my t-shirt. His.

I turned to watch him. He released the hair to the ground and stood with a stretch. I watched his arm scars expand and retract. He walked to the table and picked up his arm nylon. His automail's reflection caught me in the eyes until the black nylon covered his whole arm. Then he picked up his white shirt from the floor, pulling it across his back.

He walked to the mirror and pulled out a tie from his pocket. I watched him expertly work out the snarls in his hair. He made a tail and looped the tie around. I wondered if he had a little sister he'd practiced on.

I picked at a stain on the comforter with my nail, my chores still on my mind.

"I'm leaving tonight," he said. I looked up at him. He was still grooming his hair. I didn't know how to respond. I didn't care. I continued to pick at the comforter.

"I have to go to Central," he said in response to my silence. Central was a three-week train trip, one way.

"It's been a long time," was all I could think to say. I knew he worked in Central when he'd been younger, ten or twelve years ago. He'd only been back two times. I didn't know why he was telling me. We never spoke of our doings outside of our time together.

He nodded and started again, to put his things together, as mornings go. But he stopped again. I looked up at him. He looked at me, a second time, this time with a wry glance.

"What?" I asked suspiciously. His eyes looked different this morning, filled with something I couldn't place. I didn't look into them long enough to find out what it was.

"It will be for a while."

"I'm surprised you're even going," I said, sitting up myself and stretching. I readjusted my twisted t-shirt.

"I don't have much of a choice."

"It's not for work?"

"No." He did not elaborate. I sensed that he wanted to tell me something but he couldn't bring himself to do it. He was weighing the option of me knowing something personal about him - he wanted me to know but didn't want to give me leverage against him.

We were quiet for a time. I let it be; I knew that he would be thinking of Central, his memories there from long ago. I did my part to leave those memories alone. If he wanted to think about them, I did not want to disturb him. If he didn't, well, I could think of a few things that would take his mind off it.

Finally, he said, "We should go out."

I looked back over at him. His face was serious.

"Go out?" I practically spluttered. "Go out where?"

"Drinking."

"Why?" I must have sounded shocked because he quickly said, "Forget it."

I sat there for a moment in stunned silence. Not once, in the two plus years of our being beneficial friends had he ever suggested we do something socially. Our first two experiences of that had brought us together. But now our system was even less than that. We met, we stayed. And then we left. He had never expressed a desire for more.

It was a strange morning. He would have already left by now, on a normal morning. He'd be gone for a few weeks, sometimes a month or two, and when he was around, he'd find me. That was the arrangement.

And here he was, obviously stalling. He shrugged off my surprise and picked up his custom sock. He pulled it on his automail leg, up over his knee hardware.

He was leaving. Leaving for a while. And suddenly a grasp at normalcy, as if he wanted to make things… _standard_ before leaving. Make a mess, clean it up. And alchemy, we were a mess.

For him to make small talk or suggest we do normal things when we so clearly never did, well, it struck me that he might be trying to say goodbye. As if the reason he suddenly wanted to be cordial was because he wanted to, in some ordinary way, thank me for the time we had spent together; appreciation for a job well done. Maybe he really did want to buy me a drink. Except that was not the Elric I knew.

Then I reminded myself that I didn't know him. He was a quick fuck for a lonely night.

I continued to watch him. He found his pants, pushing the inside-out leg back through. His left leg first, so his automail would not snag. He put his hand in after his leg and circled it to make sure his leg was not caught anywhere, then pulled them up and fastened his buckle.

I didn't care that he was leaving. But I made up my mind to allow his goodbye.

"You're going away for a while," I repeated slowly.

He stopped again to listen.

"You….planning on meeting some scarred women up in Central?"

"I'm not going to there to slum around bars," he replied. "I just have to do a favor then I never have to go back."

"And you can't do it from here, the favor?"

"The favor is my presence."

"A rather _large_ favor..."

"And one I can't get out of."

Again, the silence settled on us. Did he want me to argue for him to stay? I couldn't fathom it. This man? He had already progressed so much farther in the art of cynicism than I had. I called him by a name. He had already forgotten mine; a nothing woman with a nothing name. At the ends of our days together, he would yank on his boots and tie his hair back, and walk out the door without ever acknowledging me as a person. It was the most redeeming quality about him. A lesser man, a man with some semblance of a heart, couldn't have done it.

And now, here we was, trying unsuccessfully to make small talk, to act as thought he cared about me or our time together as anything more than vanity.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized this wasn't a normal goodbye. If all of this sentiment was suddenly painless for the man who had so completely lost his faith in people, I was probably never going to see him again. Maybe he would stay in Central. Then as I unraveled that thought in my head, I knew it wasn't true.

I knew the truth. He was leaving for death.

"So, let's say, you and me go have that drink," I said, getting up. Hell, we'd done it before. We could do it again and survive intact.

Not that we would need to survive, if he never came back.

Elric left. The weeks passed on with no word.

He was usually gone in spurts of weeks. I knew he traveled for his research and that sometimes he had to go farther than he liked but he would telephone as soon as he got into town. I would make arrangements somewhere, never my house, and call back. We'd spend a day or rarely two living out of a room. I had no idea where he stayed when he was not with me.

Months became harder. I'd grown more dependent on our routine than I'd realized. I was thinking, one afternoon, on my living room sofa, of the things about him I enjoyed the most.

I was drawn to his flawless stoniness, his resolve to never feel anything worth feeling. Even our sex was a necessity for him. He refused to become attached to it. Whoever had broken the heart of him had done a terrific job in making sure the pieces never healed exactly flush. That was the perfect man for me.

I missed that painful kind of sadness I could see whenever I looked at him - when I watched him looking at his reflection while pulling his long hair back, when I saw him tightening a bolt in his knee.

It was this heaviness that he carried - it was what I looked forward to the most about him. It reminded me of how very lucky we were. I knew I was lucky to be alive. He hadn't needed to tell me that about himself. Lucky to have the parts we needed to fuck or even less than that, that we could functionally run or walk or see.

When I thought of him walking through Central, trying not to think of his past, I thought it was all for the better. We so often run from things that can find us anywhere. Better to face those things until they have no hold on us, no matter where we go. I only knew about bits and pieces of his life, that he'd once had a brother and a lover, as well as an arm and a leg. He'd come to live with the automail. Now he just needed to come to terms with the emptiness that people tend to carve inside us when they leave.

We had used each other for too long to escape from that - the emptiness that the missing pieces of us left behind inside of us. It was just… _easier_ to come together with someone who already understood that kind of painful yearning.

So much so, I realized, that when he was away, there was no one left to understand. My body needed him, in this strange way – it didn't have anything to do with love. Elric knew that. Someone had shattered my pieces once too. Now I no longer craved that kind of intimacy with anyone – I just needed somebody that understood that speaking wasn't necessary to feel. He had been the way I found relief from the world.

Each of us were only half a person. Even if he had combined us with his alchemy, there were too many pieces in some ways, not enough in others. We were never a perfect match, never the whole that we were both unconsciously seeking, but it was a reassurance that it had been the closest either of us would ever get.

And so I knew I would wait for him, if he ever came wandering back.


End file.
